Jeff Bezos investigating whether Donald Trump hacked his phone to leak damaging text messages

Jeff Bezos has reportedly accused Donald Trump of being the mastermind of a salacious hack which ended his marriage.

Jeff Bezos is reportedly investigating whether Donald Trump had a hand in leaking his salacious private text messages to a US tabloid, ending his marriage of 25 years.

The Amazon founder’s personal security team are “increasingly convinced” that “political motives” were behind the embarrassing disclosure of messages to girlfriend Lauren Sanchez, according The Daily Beast.

Mr Bezos has come under attack from Mr Trump due to his ownership of The Washington Post, an anti-Trump newspaper frequently accused by the US President of peddling “fake news”.

“So sorry to hear the news about Jeff Bozo being taken down by a competitor whose reporting, I understand, is far more accurate than the reporting in his lobbyist newspaper, the Amazon Washington Post,” Mr Trump tweeted last month. “Hopefully the paper will soon be placed in better & more responsible hands!”

The National Enquirer, which has a long and chequered past with Mr Trump, early last month published a “blockbuster four-month investigation” revealing the world’s richest man was having an affair with the married TV personality.

EXCLUSIVE: In an 11-page world exclusive special report, The Enquirer exposes WHAT REALLY tore apart Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and his wife after 25 years. On newsstands THURSDAY. pic.twitter.com/mXhrAFnF2k

— National Enquirer (@NatEnquirer) January 9, 2019

pic.twitter.com/Gb10BDb0x0

— Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) January 9, 2019

So sorry to hear the news about Jeff Bozo being taken down by a competitor whose reporting, I understand, is far more accurate than the reporting in his lobbyist newspaper, the Amazon Washington Post. Hopefully the paper will soon be placed in better & more responsible hands!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 14, 2019

Mr Bezos and wife MacKenzie announced their divorce on Twitter shortly before the publication of the Enquirer ’s first story. The tabloid followed up by revealing details of Mr Bezos’ text messages to his lover.

“I love you, alive girl,” one message published by the paper read. “I will show you with my body, and my lips and my eyes, very soon.” Another said, “I want to smell you, I want to breathe you in. I want to hold you tight. I want to kiss your lips. I love you. I am in love with you.”

The blockbuster divorce announcement made headlines around the world, not least because the split positions Mrs Bezos to become the world’s wealthiest woman if she takes half of her husband’s $US137 billion fortune.

TV personality Lauren Sanchez. Picture: Paul Archuleta/Getty Images

The Mirror earlier reported Ms Sanchez had shared the messages with a friend to boast about her new relationship. The friend then supposedly tipped off the Enquirer, whose journalists trailed the pair around the country for the last half of 2018.

The UK tabloid quoted sources close to the Amazon boss who said he was furious Ms Sanchez had been “so careless” to share details of their private conversations with friends and that he was “hugely embarrassed”.

But The Daily Beast report published on Wednesday appears to contradict that explanation. The site quotes “three people familiar with the probe”, saying investigators looked into Ms Sanchez but had “not uncovered evidence that she was involved”.

Potential hacking of Mr Bezos’ phone was also ruled out, according to the report. The Daily Beast said investigators were now “eyeing individuals with ties to various figures in the president’s orbit, who might have also had access to Bezos’ or Sanchez’s phones”.

The site did not elaborate on that serious allegation, which would suggest some type of illegal domestic spying by the US President on a political opponent using intelligence assets such as the National Security Agency.

Shortly before The Daily Beast’s story was published, former Trump associate Roger Stone — currently facing criminal charges stemming from the Russia probe — took to conspiracy website InfoWars to deny the allegations.

“The Daily Beast is about to publish a story claiming that I, working with President Trump and the NSA, hacked the cell phone of Lauren Sanchez, the paramour of Jeff Bezos, or that we hacked Bezos’ cell phone, and that we gave the information to the National Enquirer,” he said.

He added that the claim was being “pushed by the Amazon PR people”. “No, the Trump administration, the Trump NSA, the Trump intelligence services did not hack Jeff Bezos’ cell phone,” he said.

Amazon has been contacted for comment.

WHY DOES TRUMP HATE AMAZON?

Mr Trump has launched a number of public attacks against Amazon and Mr Bezos during and before his presidency. Early last year he accused the online retailer of ripping off the US Postal Service to the tune of “billions of dollars”.

“Unlike others, they pay little or no taxes to state & local governments, use our Postal System as their Delivery Boy (causing tremendous loss to the U.S.), and are putting many thousands of retailers out of business!” he tweeted in March.

A report in Axios at the time quoted anonymous sources who described Mr Trump as “obsessed with Amazon”. They said his wealthy real estate friends complained to him that Amazon was killing shopping malls and bricks-and-mortar retailers.

He also strongly believes that the company gets a free ride from US taxpayers, despite it being “explained to him in multiple meetings that his perception is inaccurate and that the post office actually makes a ton of money from Amazon”, an anonymous source told the website.

But his biggest beef appears to be with Mr Bezos himself, and the perception that the billionaire uses The Washington Post as a “lobbying” weapon. In 2015 he tweeted that the paper “loses a fortune” and Mr Bezos held onto it “for purposes of keeping taxes down at his no-profit company”.

Mr Bezos responded to that tweet with a joke about shooting the then-presidential candidate into space. “Finally trashed by @RealDonaldTrump,” he wrote. “Will still reserve him a seat on the Blue Origin rocket. #SendDonaldToSpace”

Vanity Fair, also citing anonymous sources, reported that Mr Trump’s vendetta was deeply personal. “He’s off the hook on this. It’s war,” one source told the publication. Another said, “He gets obsessed with something, and now he’s obsessed with Bezos. Trump is like, how can I f*** with him?”

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